Category: Fiber fight

Misinformation Alert: Mail Piece

Fiber Supporters,

A misleading mail piece has gone out to Lafayette residents. The text below which is in bold refers to charges in the 4- page mailer. The design of the piece is meant to elicit Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt…Large, screaming headlines dominate the piece. (The headline on the front page is literally being screamed by a young boy.) The flyer hopes to gain some credibility by quoting newspapers but, unfortunately for the author’s arguments, the sort of selective quotation you find there only serves to put the reader on notice that the argument being made cannot be supported any other way.

This is a return to the sorts of deliberately misleading tactics that we saw in the two push polls and in the so-called academic broadband forum. It is an attempt to manipulate the people of Lafayette.

Please take a moment to read this note. Talk to your friends, neighbors, and family about the real explanations of the points raised. Don’t be fooled and don’t let your people be fooled either.

Page 1:
Marietta sold at a loss:
The Marietta system has nothing in common with LUS’ plan. It was a speculative wholesale system that marketed bandwidth to large companies far beyond the boundaries of the city by taking advantage of peculiar Georgia laws. Even so it was breaking even when it was sold to fulfill a campaign promise. The new owner retained the whole staff and continues to pursue the original business model.

It has nothing to do with Lafayette’s Fiber to the Home business plan. BellSouth, Cox, and Fiber 411 know this. And until this flyer hit the 411 guys had quit trying to use it; it made them far too easy targets. But when there’s no time to point out how foolish this is the temptation was too great…

Bristol-losses and rate hikes
This part of the flyer is an ugly attempt to lie to people by selectively quoting the local Bristol newspaper. Here is the context for the part of the paragraph that the flyer reproduces. The part the opponents of Lafayette’s plan have chosen to pull out of context is marked in red. Read the red parts first and then read the full paragraph. This is simply and plainly dishonest; it distorts the plain meaning of the paragraph:

A year after it became one of the few public utilities in the country offering full telecommunications services, Bristol Virginia Utilities is beating its business plan and reaching its goals more quickly than expected. Still, BVU experienced unexpectedly heavy losses in 2003 because of legal and regulatory obstacles and raised its cable rates by as much as 15 percent. Competitors continue to complain about the public utility’s unfair advantages over private enterprise; a battle over the legality of BVU’s telephone service drags on. But customers are signing up – and staying with the service – in unexpected numbers, Chief Executive Officer Wes Rosenbalm said. BVU is one of growing number of public utility providers around the country using public money to get into the traditionally private-sector telecom business. It traditionally had provided electric, water and wastewater services. BVU now offers a suite of services including cable, phone and Internet access under the title BVU OptiNet.

Notice please, that the article mentions losses ONLY in the context of celebrating the fact that those losses were not enough to keep the utility from reaching its goals only a year later.

Page 2:
Fiber has been a failure….
Cut through the hysterical tone of this paragraph and notice that all they really mention is Marietta, and Bristol. –The examples of failure which, as we saw when we went over page one were either not failures or had nothing to do with Lafayette.

Extra Taxes and Extra Debt….higher rates
As the incumbent providers and Fiber 411 well know BellSouth’s law, passed last summer, forbids “cross subsidization”—meaning that it is against the law to use money from rate hikes in the rest of the utilities to support the telecom side. BellSouth, of all “people” should know that. They drafted the law. As to taxes: are NO taxes involved with this project. It is all to be paid for from revenue that people willingly offer to purchase services they find valuable. New taxes MUST be voted on by the people of the parish before they can be levied. This is pure fear-mongering.

Private Companies offer the same service:
This untrue. “Other” companies will not offer Fiber to the Home and have firmly and repeatedly said so. Fiber to the home is not the same thing as fiber to the curb. Fiber to the Curb is BellSouth marketing-speak for the more accurate term “fiber to the node.” In fiber to the home the fiber goes to the home. Period. BellSouth’s fiber to the curb plan takes fiber to within 500 feet of the home…1 and 2/3 football fields. I suggest you go out of the front door of your home and mentally count all the homes that are within 1 and 2/3rds football fields. That is how many people you would have to share the bandwidth of a single strand of fiber with. It just isn’t the same as having your own. And no one should try to tell you so.

Page 3
Marietta:
Marietta again. Repetition doesn’t make it any truer. See the response to page one.

Bristol:
Bristol again. Repetition doesn’t make it any truer. See the response to page one.

Ashland:
I don’t have the facts to hand about Ashland. Sorry. I’ll dig around. Maybe Ashland is in trouble….but I’d want to look it up myself before I accepted that as true based on the quality of the “research” shown in this flyer.

Page 4
Don’t Let Lafayette be the Next National Headline.
That’s the entire text of the page in large, bold, type. Lafayette Coming Together suggests just the opposite: Vote Yes, For Fiber, and Lafayette will make national headlines for having stood up to the incumbents and for having decided to invest in ourselves and our city’s future…

PS: if this sort of stuff offends you; please consider joining our volunteer effort to get out the vote as a way of counteracting it.

To Phone Bank Friday and Saturday:
http://lafayettecomingtogether.org/phonebank.htm

To work on getting out the vote on Saturday:
http://lafayettecomingtogether.org/assign.htm
(put a note in the comments box that you’d like to do election day work)

“Die TV. Die! Die! Die!” or “Why You Want Real Bandwidth”

Television is really aggravating. We are so used to it that we forget how irritating most of the time but occasionally something happens to remind us just how bad things are. And we go off on TV (and sometimes even go off it for awhile). But we almost never realize why it is so bad.

We hate our TV because of limited bandwidth.

A fella named Ernest Miller reminded me of this with a post of his called “Die Channel. Die! Die! Die!” Ernest is one of those brilliant men who sit down, locate a problem of real substance, and try to fix it. His area is the intersection of law and technology. He’s at Yale now and is noted for his work on modern copyright issues. But his complaints about having to watch TV on someone else’s scheduling and about the artificial lengths of TV shows is what led me to think once again about how irritating TV is.

And I think we hate our TVs because of long-standing bandwidth limits.

Things to be justly irritated by:

  • Your favorite show is scheduled at a fixed time every week. (But your schedule isn’t fixed to match!)
  • Somebody in New York thinks all the good stuff ought to come on while you want to sleep. (And you refuse to change your sleeping habits or job to accommodate that New Yorker!)
  • Apparently there is some “normal” person in Kansas who all these shows is supposed to please mildly without offending very often. (But this fare pleases you about as well as the food in Kansas . . . you want something with a little more life!)
  • Someone has made up a rule that TV shows can only be shown in increments of a half-hour. (But you are irritated by shows that are have 23 minutes of decent content and 7 minutes of utter fluff!)
  • Every time something dramatic or interesting is about to happen on a TV show, they go off on a commercial break. (Even worse, you suspect that the only reason anything interesting happened was so that you’d hang around till the commercials were over!)
  • 212 channels and they can’t find anything worth watching? (What’s that about? A rerun of the Mary Tyler Moore Show is my best choice? Why?)
  • Not only that–but all that junk is expensive. (I hate paying for stuff I not only don’t like but wouldn’t have in my house if I had a choice!)

All that can be attributed to limited bandwidth — to bandwidth that is rare and therefore expensive. Now nobody much thinks about it this way right now. But that is because you seldom can see what the problem is until it has been solved. And I suspect that the problem with TV is about to be solved.

The solution is Downloadable Video (DV instead of TV). You go to the internet and find the show you want to watch, (pay probably), download it, and watch it.

You can:

  • You can watch episode one at 7:12 one Wednesday night and episode two at 2:00 the next Thursday if it suits your schedule.
  • Watch your favorite show at 3:15 in the afternoon every day and sleep when you want, thank you very much.
  • You don’t have to watch anything that that guy in Kansas would watch. And you don’t have to eat his food, either.
  • Some episodes of a show are 52 minutes long and some are 68 minutes long and it is all good stuff, ’cause nobody bothers with fluff if it doesn’t have to fit the schedule of some advertising executive.
  • The rhythm of DV shows is not determined by advertising breaks the way that TV shows are. The plot actually drives the show. At first it seems weird but it’s easy to get used to.
  • You’re not limited to 212 channels. Like bass fishing? Download your favorite show from 1982. Have a strange sense of humor? Download 12 Andy of Mayberrys and have a party with an Aunt Bee theme.
  • You pay for what you download. But you only pay for what you want to watch. None of that awful schlock. (Unless you like awful schlock–then you can have as much as you want—there is plenty.)

But you can’t fix TV this way unless you have real, big, bandwidth—cheap. Fiber to the home is the way out of the wasteland. Nothing else will provide adequate bandwidth to do this and everything else you might want to do at the same time. It is the future. Even after we get big bandwidth it will take a while to mature. Only those companies that have capacity to burn will be able to compete. And only those communities that have really big bandwidth will get it early. It will be well worth having, don’t you think? Replace your TV with DV.

You can put in an order on July 16th by voting Yes!, For Fiber.

Higher costs due to BellSouth’s law

The Advocate story, LUS to receive draft of PSC pricing rules, gives background for a set of draft rules the Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) is expected to issue this week.

The regulation is a result of language in BellSouth’s misnamed “Local Government Fair Competition” Act (Act 736) passed last summer as a compromise to the original BellSouth bill which would have made Lafayette’s fiber-optic project impossible.

The story, while well-written, tends to be a little confusing in part because of necessary technical language such as “in-lieu-of-taxes” and “cross-subsidizaton,” and in part because the concepts seem a little off. I think I can help clarify the matter by giving a little context. You need to clear your mind of the usual assumption that the PSC exists to ensure fairness for consumers and citizens—to make sure that rates are no higher than they must be. Act 736 is not about that. It is about ensuring “fairness” (cough, cough) for telecom corporations–by which the framers of the law (uh, BellSouth) meant that municipal providers should labor under any burden that they do and a number of burdens that no private corporation would ever tolerate. The purpose of this segment of the law is to artificially raise the cost to consumers and citizens above that which they would have to pay were there no such “fair” law.

Ok, stop for a minute and wrap your head around that. The purpose of this regulation is to ensure that you pay higher rates than you would otherwise. And the PSC is supposed to enforce it (don’t you know they hate this). Once you have this Alice in Wonderland concept firmly fixed in your mind the story makes a lot better sense.

Ready? Good. Let’s jump down the rabbit-hole.

One part of the regulations that we will see in draft form this week is that which results from the Act 736 requirement that the PSC make sure that rates to customers are set higher than the actual cost of LUS doing business. This requirement is supposed to account for taxes and fees that LUS doesn’t have to pay because it is a public body or because it already owns the rights of ways for which the fees are paid. (Honestly. That is really the logic of it.) LUS managed, as part of the compromise, to get its contribution to the city government (in-lieu-of-taxes) counted against this requirement. As it turns out, the in-lieu payment is already greater than all the taxes and fees that private providers have to pay, regardless of what sob stories we often hear from telecom corporations. But still, the PSC has to set up elaborate regulations–and LUS has to spend money to track of all this–so that the PSC can confirm that LUS is not saving its customers too much money.

Now if that isn’t strange enough, in addition to asking LUS to charge you for taxes it doesn’t pay and fees to use property it already owns, Act 736 also requires that the PSC impose conditions on LUS that no private business has to endure. The basic idea is that LUS should have to pretend that the new business is not a part of LUS and charge itself accordingly. Private businesses normally start new divisions and enterprises in areas in which their current resources make them better able to compete efficiently. That’s just common sense. You’d think. But in the world in which Act 736 forces the PSC to exist, it is illegal–for public entities. So there will be a “cost allocation manual” that controls what percentage of the work on a pole is assigned to the telecom division and how much to power. There’ll be “affiliate transactions” regulations that mandate that LUS charge open rate for work folks in the power division or sewer divisions do for LUS. There will be endless red tape to prove that they are doing these inefficient things. To what end? Well, to hear BellSouth tell it, to prevent the evils of “cross-subsidization,” which apparently is a bad thing when a public power company uses its resources to support telecom services but a good thing when a telecom company uses its immense technical resources and broadband backbone to muscle into the wireless business. (Cingular anyone?) “Cross-subsidization” is good, fundamental business practice and an important way in which the free enterprise system develops efficiencies to pass on to consumers and enrich owners. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea. Except when the efficiencies are earned by BellSouth’s competitors.

The truth is that the real purpose of these regulations is to force unnecessary inefficiencies and costs onto the telecom division. And the purpose of that is to make sure that LUS cannot bring your rates down as low as it would otherwise be able to do.

So, friends and neighbors, the coming rate hearings are not only an inscrutable bureaucratic nightmare, they will also determine just how much how much savings our utility will be allowed to pass on to us and how much phantom inefficiency it (and no private provider) will have to carry on its books when it comes time to determine the rates the PSC allows it to charge you. We will discover just how much BellSouth’s law will cost the consumers of Lafayette. It’s all more interesting than you think.

Game Over? The Times and (Lack of) Controversy

The Times which has been strangely absent on reporting fiber optics, aside from the odd ramblings of the new general manager, has decided to run a cover story on the issue. Continuing its off-key approach the author is the Times sports and movie writer: Don Allen. He of the He said; She said column.

Beyond that the story focuses on 1) cost, 2) remarks from council members, and 3) amazement at how little controversy has been generated. The article tries to cast the lack of controversy as lack of interest but that is only the predisposition of a reporter who sees everything in terms of conflict—who habitually analyzes even movies in terms of “He said; She said.” But lack of noise is not the same as lack of interest and lack of conflict is what we see here. People are interested, I think but no real controversy has emerged

The unasked question is worth asking: Why has there been so little controversy? Unfortunately, the article doesn’t try and explain it. What the incumbent corporations have done here in Lafayette has worked in most places. It’s a simple story and one that has a long and dishonorable history: Make the people fearful of the future, uncertain of the path, and doubtful of their own abilities. FUD, the incumbent strategy in Lafayette, is only the most local recent example of an ancient strategy for keeping privilege in place.

We’ve been told that we don’t really know our own desires. That, in fact, the incumbents are already supplying us with all that we really want—or at least all that we are willing to pay for. They’ve inferred that our leadership is, well, to put it gently: grandiose and deceptive. That the local engineers at LUS are incapable. And that we are all too stupid to know what we are getting into. The paternalism is incredible… And in most places incredibly successful.

The same pattern mixed with the same outright lies, casual deception, fake experts, and threats succeeds in stirring controversy in other places. It worked just a week ago in Illinois where a fiber referendum was defeated after a disenfranchise campaign that dwarfs even our own experience. It is a significant part of our success that our leadership didn’t allow a referendum to happen here and a short review of the experience of the Tri-Cities will confirm that judgment.

It hasn’t worked here.

I am far from sure why. But I can speculate a bit, based both on what is unique about Lafayette and what other cities that have resisted the onslaught look like.

Lafayette is unique in that it is a Creole city—not in the racial/cultural sense that we usually mean it here, though that is part of it. But in the anthropological sense: we are a community of communities; very different cultures and peoples have learned to live together; if not always in harmony then at least effectively and almost easily. French, Americain, Creoles…the mix is strong, the flavor distinct and the accomplishment something for which we do not give ourselves enough credit. Part of getting along has been learning to trust your leadership and to be willing to not fight out in the open too much. As long as the interest leaders are agreed the public has learned to sit back with some trust. In such a system outsiders are likely to blunder into a system the don’t understand and the habitual reaction to outsider interference is to just ignore them and find some accommodation with folks that you actually have to live with. That pattern is not always a good thing but those habits may be working in our favor right now. The effect is to quietly close ranks behind those we trust and shut out outsiders.

Another city has successfully resisted a viscous incumbent attack is Provo–we heard from its Mayor not long ago. Provo is not a Creole city at all…but it shares with Lafayette the quality of being, for want of a better word, insular. Provo is a Mormon city and I have to suspect that it is similarly used to assuming that outsiders aren’t much to be trusted for fairly valid historical reasons. Even if those reasons are different from ours.

So internal coherence and a suspicion of outsider intentions could be a key. I suspect that cities without a strong sense of their own uniqueness and identity—suburban communities or sprawling cities, or small towns overrun by urban expatriates would find it much harder to resist the drumbeat of the incumbents.

Speculation, as I said. But interesting—and not nearly as surprising as the Times would have us believe.

TJCrawdad Emerges Into the Light

TJCrawdad aka Tom Cantrell has emerged from behind his mask over at his Let the People Vote Blog. He hit several local blogs where folks have written about his shenanigans (LUSFTTH, Timshel, LafayetteProFiber) making comments in response to particular posts.

The most extensive discussion took place at Timshel where I had guest blogged a summary of the week’s fiber news and included material on Crawdad/Cantrell that I had posted at Lafayette Pro Fiber that week.

I am happy to see this out in the open. It had really irritated me that Cantrell so happily took potshots at folks who were trying to do their jobs while being shielded by the annonymity of blogger from any real consequence. Oh–he is absolutely right that I got his title wrong. I am not sure where that crept in but it’s my mistake.

I’ll make a few comments at the end but in all fairness you oughta get a chance to read what he says before I weigh in. Here is the exchange that took place in the comments:

Bonjour. Thanks for all of the recognition on your blog, but I must set the record straight. First, I am not a Vice President, I am but a lowly director, but thanks for the promotion. Second, all of the stuff in the profile is true. I was born in La Rochelle, France so I do love all things french, the Pelican Brief is among my favorite movies (I listed it because I thought it was apropos), etc… As for living in Lafayette, I’ve spent about as much time there since May as I have in Tyler… It’s my “home away from home.” There are no lies sorry to say. Finally, I agree with you completely on the silliness… That was my intent. If we were all a little sillier about this, we’d all be better served. I hope you’ve had as much fun with it as I have. With that, I bid you goodbye.

Thanks,
TJCrawdad
TJCrawdad | Email | Homepage | 09.28.04 – 2:06 pm | #

Ah, you know how it is. There are all these people who think a lie is a lie. They are sooo unfun to have around. They tend to think that the word “resident” has some particular meaning. It’s so irritating and unreasonable. They are the same annoying sort that tend to think that hiding behind a mask while you punch your legitimate opposition is, well, dishonest. You know, because they can’t punch back.

Such fun to take a little shot from the dark. Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge, Tee Hee….

If you don’t want folks to say ugly things about you then you could always try being open and aboveboard. You could say who you are on the blog and who pays for the bread on your the table. You could try not lying about being a neighbor of the folks you are speaking to. This wasn’t some quiet little blog where someone wanted to muse in anonymity. This blog was advertised around the clock on channel 14 for weeks. Its intent was to deceive.
John | Email | Homepage | 09.28.04 – 10:48 pm | #

Did you really watch channel 14 for weeks around the clock? That should win you some kind of record.

Let me be clear about something; I blog for those who are my friends and who ARE your neighbors and for whom you have so little regard. They are the Cox employees who don’t have the luxury of “blogging” like you do because they have real jobs. They work incredibly hard to try to provide quality services to their fellow residents. In the meantime, they have to listen to you and those of your ilk pontificate about things you know nothing about.

Tom Cantrell
a.k.a. TJCrawdad
TJCrawdad | Email | Homepage | 09.28.04 – 11:59 pm | #

Behind my “mask”, as you call it, are over a hundred decent residents of Lafayette that work for our company that you have no qualms about dissing if they dare to have an opinion and express it in the letters to the editor. Incidently, it is not “my mask”, it is “our mask”; I am our collective voice.

OK, I’ll come clean; I get paid by Cox Communications to tell our side of the story and to stick up for our folks – to give a voice to people you clearly distain.

Now it’s your turn; what are you in it for – glory, fame, money – your turn to come clean – and please don’t give me that technology of the future jazz – you don’t have a crystal ball and obviously you are no businessman.

Tom Cantrell
a.k.a. TJCrawdad
TJCrawdad | Email | Homepage | 09.29.04 – 12:00 am | #

Honest injun Mr. Cantrell? I’m in it for my community and my grandchildren. I doubt that is actually so hard to understand.

There are values beyond glory, fame, or money. They don’t appeal to everyone but they appeal to me.

I do appreciate your coming clean. Thanks.
John | Email | Homepage | 09.29.04 – 12:53 am | #

Mr. Cantrell says: “I get paid by Cox Communications to tell our side of the story.” Yes, and that is understandable. What I objected to and still object to is not simply saying that plainly. My guess is that he worries that saying so on his blog might impair his effectiveness–with the general population of Lafayette he hopes to sway and with the governmental officials that it is his day job to deal with. Secrecy is not an accident; it serves real, corporate purposes.

I don’t buy the idea that Cantrell imposes on his employees out when he says: “I am our collective voice.” I was a carpenter for nearly a decade and know what it’s like to sweat all afternoon in the July sun and come home with salt crusted in the creases of my t-shirt. My experience leads me to guess that this executive doesn’t speak for the linemen. If I were in their shoes I wouldn’t like it. Maybe I’m wrong. But this “I am our collective voice.” bit sounds awfully arrogant to me–and hardly gives him license to pretend to be a resident of Lafayette. For the record: I respect the folks who do the work and maintain the cable and internet connections that I use everyday. Its not hard to see they do a real job under tough conditions. I don’t always find it possible to respect their bosses.

Finally, it’s revealing to me that the possible motives for wanting a fiber network for Lafayette and fighting for it seem limited in Cantrell’s view to “glory, fame, money.” There is no glory, fame, or money in what I am doing on this website and no prospect of any. I am an educator–or at least that is what I have spent the largest part of my life doing. There was no glory, fame, or money in that either. My wife and I came back to Lafayette because we love Louisiana and our people and want to be with our children and grandchildren. I want the very best for Lafayette and those six small children. Nobody needs to pay me.